


So Be It

by larkingstock



Series: prompt nonsense [5]
Category: Justified
Genre: F/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-28 23:09:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13914132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkingstock/pseuds/larkingstock
Summary: The marshal has his mama's eyes (Ellstin's just trying to close up for the night).





	So Be It

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: **hands**
> 
>  _Who's Frances?  
>  It's the man's late wife._  
> \--3.07 The Man Behind the Curtain
> 
>  _Well if you like, I could tell you what I remember about your mama.  
>  That_ would _upset me._  
>  \--3.09 Loose Ends
> 
>  
> 
> The prompt nonsense series: the ongoing travails of one anon's quest to reacquire their errant writing mojo, with no guarantee of consistency, continuity, compliancy, or character appreciation.

The footsteps of the marshal with his mama's eyes fade away out there in the dark beyond the BBQ shack, and inside, in the low warm light and sudden lonely late night quiet, Ellstin looks down to see the accusation of his own hands' tremor. Asking him, just what in _the Virgin Mother herself_ he was playing at, bringing the woman up like that.

He places both palms firmly on the counter, but the enforced stillness does little good. After a minute of staring, he makes a concession to age he would not like to make for anyone else, and sits, too heavily, on the folding chair to the side. The bottle, back down on its shelf, is too much in his eyeline, but it's better than contemplating the shake in his hands.

He would have poured the man a drink and said what, exactly?

_You have her eyes_ is the least of it, and even that would have needed the drink for both of them. He has lived this life too long not to suspect that might have been what he wanted. To raise a glass with her son. Someone who knew her. Someone she loved.

She has been close to the surface, these past few days. Ever since Arlo Givens brought those thirty years ago back in his aged body standing at the bridge, and not long after came carrying it back in his confused mind, her thwarted husband roaring after her return. Ellstin had spoken of her with rough indifference, bruising her name. Necessity or not, it has not sat well with him.

Truth be told, she's been already in the air. Always is, this time of year, at the turn when the full bore of summer loses its mellow, cooling thinly into something both sharp and sweet, the slow promise of hard uncompromising winter. The time of in-between. Of the few weeks of his life Ellstin Limehouse had known Frances Givens.

Even then, a young man newly grown into his body, tall and attracting his plentiful share of female attention, full of piss and blood and seed, Ellstin had no eye for the pale, crushed women come to the holler fleeing the brutal hands and often feet of their men. Never was any hard and fast rule, other than they are to be safe, but Ellstin's father kept a close eye just as Ellstin does now. Vulnerable, grateful women and an abundance of strong men are ingredients making for calamitous recipe, color of skin or not. Jealousies, and the like. Attachments.

Ellstin breathes out slow. He always smells her, this time of year. Early morning mists and cold damp earth, a yearning tang in the world for something inexpressibly other. He tamps it all low, second nature now, just one more flavor to the texture of things--until Arlo's mean spider slink and beady hatchet face showed up behind Boyd Crowder on that bridge. Until Frances' living eyes walked right up to Ellstin's barbeque grill in the body of her son, and Ellstin had dissembled on sheer instinct, only praying he wasn't too obvious both in the looking and the _not_ looking.

His hands shook then, too, after getting away and putting the tray of ribs down inside.

So just what had he thought he would tell her son now? What could he say, just for the chance of gentling his utterance of her? _If you would indulge me an in-between moment, Marshal, I'd soon speak her name with someone who loves her._

Ellstin thinks not.

Or, _I spent one night with your mother and the world has tasted different ever since._

He almost snorts at that, the idea of saying such a thing to any man, let alone one so raw and trigger-happy as the marshal.

Ellstin knew, that night she came to him, removed her blouse and took these trembling hands and placed them on her soft white-and-pink breasts, it would be the last he ever saw her. His hands, their knuckles healed of her husband, on her skin healed of the same. Looking and touching and tasting and fucking, all the night long, their final night. Their only night. They fell asleep tangled together as the scent of dawn first crept in, and when he woke nothing but the dawn remained.

He thinks his father knew, if no one else ever did. He never said a word when Ellstin disappeared some years after, and returned silently to the holler two days later, a man grown into his choices. With Arlo Givens untouched and alive on God's green earth after his beloved wife Frances had departed it, and Noble's untouched by any fresh excuse for white folks' retaliation.

Ellstin never wonders what his father would have done. He wonders what _he_ would have done, had her passing been in any way directly at the hands of Arlo.

_Your mother walked her life with death's hand upon her shoulder. She knew it, and did not bow._

_And I see you walk the same._

First time Ellstin saw her was the first time in his young, virile existence he understood, in the broken body and withstanding soul of a white woman a decade older than him. He does not fancy explaining to the marshal that it wasn't the boy's fear that had stopped him beating the life out of Arlo with these bare hands that night on the bridge.

He has learned, in the years since, there are precious few souls walking the world who speak to yours without even the need for words. He hopes there's enough of Arlo in the kid, and enough well-worn wariness in himself, because it would not be a comfortable thing being so defenseless with a man like him. It would be easier if Ellstin could believe he harbors ill intent for Noble's, but already they've spoken too much for that.

Too much of his mother in him.

Death is crowding close and eager these days. Ellstin will hold his choices firm and his hands steady, and the walk and taste of Frances hidden secret away, and only hope that when the time comes, the marshal with his mama's eyes will tip scales for life.


End file.
